>> Sunday, July 12, 2009

Books that have been sucked into the vortex that is (clearly) operating somewhere in hostel. Near the water cooler, is where I reckon.

Transmission - Hari Kunzru

Procured at a Landmark Table-of-Perennial-Sale in Chennai, circa 2008. Reading this had taken rather longer than usual. But it was an odd sort of story, and I'd enjoyed it. More importantly, the cover art was funky.

Chocolat - Joanne Harris

My. Oh my. I loved this book. Not in a generic sense (which isn't to say I didn't like reading it. Oh well.), but this copy in particular. It had been bought with my aunt in Bangalore when we were out on a used-book-scrounge. The pages were yellowed, the spine was slightly wobbly, and it had belonged to someone called Ida, who had a lovely loopy handwriting. It had a Feel to it. It had Atmosphere. Also, it had Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche on the cover. Looking HOT.

Mobius Dick - Andrew Crumey

This was a leaving gift from my best friend when we'd just graduated from school and were en route to our respective undergrad colleges. I'm not completely sure if the Dick in the title had anything to do with it. I'd read it thrice - the second time because I wanted to to, and the third time for lack of other reading material. Yes, excluding the blurb at the back of the box of Kellog's. This is a strange, wistful book with schizophrenic characters, parallel universes and time travel thrown in for good measure. Oh, and Schrodinger's cat.

I hate losing books. Even if I'm not overly fond of them. It is worse, even, than ripping your newest jeans at the crotch. And that is saying something.

>> Wednesday, June 24, 2009

[It would seem there is yet much angst in my happy little bohemian soul. Apologies about the title. I couldn't stop myself.]

I look downto see, my feetare not my own.My fingers aremelting, slowly, drippingLike candle wax.Hot puddles on the mosaic.My eyelidsare heavy, hungIt is so cold.Drenched in misery and self-loathing, Who have I become?

>> Monday, June 22, 2009

I am king, and I am ruler supreme, and my kingdom is mine own to bless or condemn as I see fit. These people, who scurry about like ants in search of food for hoarding, they are my serfs, and all of their toiling would be for naught were it not for my grace and benevolence.My chariot is of gold, and it shall be hoisted by my men, their supple bodies tan and oiled. Raise me higher, so my people can marvel at my majestic being, at their sovereign. Watch, as they gape in awe, these weaklings, slack-jawed.Join me tonight; we shall dine at my palace. The table is set for a hundred. Watch now, how these men, these beings of lesser order bow, watch how they grovel before my countenance. None dare be inattentive to my luxuries, for my wrath is not to be made light of. Not for me, your Stoic restraint. I shall have my women as I have my wine - full-bodied and voluptuous, not unlike Rubens' Venus. And they shall love me, these women, and be devoted to my every need, for they shall know no other.Come now, let us feast.

>> Thursday, May 7, 2009

[Title sourced from the Counting Crows song of the same name]

She was a little girl in a wild, overgrown garden and the tall grass dwarfed her. She was five, wearing the green dress with the pretty yellow socks and the white mary-janes. And she was bent over a tiny puddle helping catterpillars cross, and she would marvel at the way they curled around the twig. She was seven, lying on her back in the grass when she saw the eagle. And he would soar higher with every beat of his wings. And it was beautiful and magnificent and her eyes were large with wonder. She was ten, with her face raised to the sky, and she could smell the allspice leaf crushed in her palm and she could smell the rain. She was parting the wispy wayward wildgrass stems and she could see in the endless distance a tall chimney, and the breeze was curling the smoke into fantastic patterns. She was on her favorite mango tree as high as she could go, and she stood on tiptoe to see what was beyond the sudden drop of road along the slight hill and she saw the silhouette of a lone tree, leafless and wizened and bent against the indigo of the sky, and it made her want to weep. She was the sun. And the earth belonged to her and she belonged to the earth.She was a dervish, whirling barefoot on damp soil.

>> Sunday, April 26, 2009

Today, I waxed myself for the first time. Which isn't to say that I'd spent the years ensuing the arrival of my adolescence in hairy heaven. It's just that I'd always gotten myself waxed in parlours - those strange smelling places run mostly by women who (for some strange reason) all look like eunuchs.I am a hairy person. I admit it. (And I urge all ye other lasses similarly afflicted to stand up and be proud. 'Tis nothing to be ashamed of. The era of waxing strips and hair-removal creams is come.) So when I looked down at my legs one day and saw Chewbacca's instead, I felt moved to pick up my (butter) knife.If someone had told me that I would one day enjoy giving myself pain equivalent to being skinned alive, I would have found the idea snortingly amusing. But oddly enough, I didn't mind it. I even found the pain strangely therapeutic. It was almost as if with each strip of wax I pulled off, I was leaving behind all of my doubt and confusion. I am now a surer and more confident (not to mention hair-free) girl. Since this whole process took above of 2 hours, I also missed dinner, which event will ofcourse render me slimmer and more attractive in the near distant future.This little episode got me thinking about all of those women (and fewer in number, but prettier - men) the world over who engage in this painful ritual. And I have come to the conclusion that a reasonable method of calculating how close a woman is to suicide is to determine how often she gets rid of her body hair. The hairier she is, the greater her collection of books on the afterlife. Because all of these women (and I keep forgetting - men) who choose to go through Hell (oh, the pain!) are not merely de-furring themselves, they are reaffirming their lust for life.P.S.: Any of you reading this who think the details of bodily hair removal are gross can go wax a werewolf.

>> Monday, April 20, 2009

Introduction

Title courtesy Jimi. This line from the song 'Wild Thing' stuck in my head, and I wanted to write something which would adequately capture it's spirit. I don't know how well I've managed, but well...here it is.

Chapter I

"I don't think we should", he grumbles as she pulls him along. She turns around to stare at him, her hands on her hips. "It's my tenth birthday. On your birthday, you decide what we do", she says and turns back with a toss of her long, curly hair, continuing to drag him by the hand.The boy with the unruly mop of black hair and the deep green eyes glowers at her back. He is after all, still nine-and-three-quarters. And a whole inch shorter than her.There is a mango orchard on the other side of the fence. They race to the nearest tree, panting. She starts to climb. "Get down", he whispers loudly, "You'll hurt yourself". "Don't be silly", she yells back, throwing him a ripe mango. "I'm stronger than you are".He grins at her, biting into the mango, the juice running down his shirt. As she sits on a branch not very high up, the sun shines down on her. He looks up from his mango to see her slim legs dangling from the branch, her large brown eyes sparkling in the sunlight. There is suddenly a lump in his throat. He swallows. And then coughs. "Are you allright?""I'm fine", he says, frowning up at her.

Chapter II

Her brain clouded in a drug-induced haze, she sways lazily to the Pink Floyd playing somewhere in the distance as she fiddles with the buttons on her shirt. She slips it off. Now in jeans and a bra, she walks across the room to sit astride his lap. She kisses him. Feeling lightheaded, he watches as she stands up to slowly remove her jeans, and then her bra. The black lace of her panties is in sharp, beautiful contrast to the cream of her skin. She turns to sit on the edge of the bed, her legs spread, and smiles at him. He stands up and unbuttons his shirt, letting it fall to the floor. He walks to where she is sitting and she drags him closer by the waistband of his trousers, pushing him onto the bed. She crawls to him, her knees on either side of his. Spreading her hands over his chest, her brown eyes look deep into his unfathomable green ones and she grins. As she kisses him along the hard line of his jaw, her eyelashes brush his lower lip.

He breathes in, sharp. She purrs, catlike.

Epilogue

Sitting hand in hand on the edge of the pier, their toes skim the cool waters of the lake. Her hair is loosely tied with a cloth. His is beginning to turn grey around the temples. They are quiet as they watch the sun go down. As the evening chill starts to set in, she snuggles in closer to him. The boy with the green eyes kisses her forehead, and smiles down at his brown-eyed girl.

>> Thursday, April 16, 2009

[This was originally posted on another site (well, facebook, if you should know) about a month back, but I thought it seemed more appropriate here.]

Is it just me, or do Radiohead songs sound particularly wistful when you listen to them all alone, in the dead of the night? Because I was just listening to Fake Plastic Trees - and by the end of the third stanza, all of a sudden - I was crying. Actual choke-back-your-sobs, blow-your-nose wailing. I've heard it twice since, and that strange feeling of loneliness hasn't dimmed one bit in intensity.I think it began when Thom Yorke went 'she looks like the real thing' in his heartbreaking falsetto, and then went on to sing to his fake plastic love how he could 'blow through the ceiling'; the music building all the while to a crescendo - I think thats the part that brought me right to the edge. And when it suddenly drops to 'wear me out' - I fell into my salty, watery abyss.Then again, maybe I'm just PMSing.

>> Wednesday, April 15, 2009

She lay curled on her side, her eyes open. The room was narrow and ill-lit, with a bulb above the dressing table giving it a sick, deathly glow. Paint was chipping off the walls, and there was a damp patch on the ceiling from a leak somewhere.She had been awake all night, for countless nights now. Her eyes were bleary, her eyelids tired and heavy. But she continued to stare unfocussedly into the distance as she willed them open - almost as if hoping that this only contact with the real world would stop her demons from turning on themselves.As one of her legs dangled off the edge of the bed, her toe grazed the marble floor. It was much cooler than the bed she lay on. She slid off the bed to lie on the floor, her arms spread in an unrequited embrace. A thin sliver of sunlight from a crack in a shuttered window lit up a small patch on the ground.The noise of the fan whirring above filled her head, and it grew louder and louder till there was nothing but silence.

>> Friday, April 10, 2009

The sea is turquoise green I say, just perfect, even. A pink cat with a bow tie saunters along the beach, the water occasionally sloshing over his feet. Another feline - lanky and whiskered (also pink) creeps out from behind a boulder to stand at full height.

Snagglepuss stares into the the barrel of a gun pointed at his heart. Heavens to Murgatroyd!*sound of gunshot*Blood spurts from the hole in his chest to turn the clear waters a murky, dark, ugly colour.Staring stricken at his attacker, he crumples.A hero dies. Exit, stage nowhere.

She jumped out of bed and bounded down the stairs, her raven curls flouncing with each step. Her face lit up with an arresting, beautiful, gap-toothed smile when she saw her father waiting for her. She held out her arms and leaped over the last three steps right into his arms. And squealed in delight as he swung her over his head.Mornin', sunshine.